Friends' quick action saves S.C. man after heart attack

From: CBS News

Fifty-two-year-old Tony Gilliard is approaching life like never before.

"You gotta live your life like every day is your last day," he says.

This past June 11 almost was his last day. Gilliard was playing his regular weekly basketball game in a church gymnasium in Greer, S.C., when he suddenly passed out. It quickly became clear that this was a matter of life or death.

"I don't remember nothing," Gilliard says. "I was just dead. I just died."

It was a heart attack, and Gilliard was in full cardiac arrest. His teammates immediately got to work.

One grabbed the defibrillator the church had just recently installed. Another started chest compressions.

Yet another, who had undergone defibrillator training just 4 days before, shocked Gilliard's heart back to life -- four-and-a-half minutes after it had stopped beating.

As the EMTs arrived about five minutes later, Gilliard began to regain consciousness.